Amazon has a massive footprint in Southern California with 3 fulfillment and sortation centers, 3 delivery stations, and 5 whole foods market locations. The Seattle-based company that revolutionized online shopping will open a new fulfillment center in Victorville promising to bring over 1,000 full-time jobs to the region.

The company also published its 2021 U.S. Economic Impact Report, which shows that it invested more than $19.3 billion in the Inland Empire and $81 billion in California, since 2010. The report summarizes Amazon’s investments in the U.S., including infrastructure and compensation for employees (2010 – 2020).

“Amazon’s roughly $20 billion investment in the Inland Empire has helped our region become a national leader in the goods movement industry,” said Paul Granillo, President and CEO of Inland Economic Partnership. 

Weathering the economic downturn

Amazon’s huge footprint in the Inland Empire has helped the region to sustain the economic downturn better than other parts of the country.

“The more than 40,000 jobs created by Amazon, allowed the Inland Empire to weather the economic downturn better than our neighboring counties.  More importantly, it provides our residents with local employment opportunities negating the need for multi-hour daily commutes, said Granillo.

Amazon to open fulfillment center in Ontario also

Amazon will also open a fulfillment center in Ontario in 2022. The center will hire over 1,500 employees from the region. The facility will handle delivery of smaller packages and employees will work with innovative technologies like robotics.

The Amazon Effect

Amazon is Inland Empire’s largest private sector employer. 

The company came to California in 2012 when it opened a fulfillment center in San Bernardino. Since then, the company’s impact can be seen everywhere, from number of jobs added to the secondary impact Amazon had on the local economies.

Amazon jobs in the Inland Empire grew from 2,700 in 2012 to more than 15,000 in 2016 whereas it added 34,600 indirect jobs to the Empire’s economy in the same period.

One in Five of All New Jobs in Inland Empire’s Logistics Sector

According to an estimate, Amazon added almost one in five of all new jobs created in 2012-2017 in the Inland Empire region’s logistics sector. If you want to grasp the true impact of Amazon’s presence in the Inland Empire, read this detailed analysis by John Husing, chief economist for the Inland Empire Economic Partnership.

Apart from its impact on the employment count, Amazon generously supports its employees into taking up vocational training and certification programs. A one-year stint can open the doors for an Amazon employee to have the employer foot 95% of the cost of four years of vocational training or certification courses in high-demand fields.

The impact cannot be described more precisely than the way former City of San Bernardino Mayor Carey Davis explained it:

“In 2012, the city went into bankruptcy. And at that time, the city was over 12 percent unemployment,”. In 2018, the city achieved an unemployment rate that was half what it was in 2012. 

Author: Sharjeel

Sharjeel joined Startempire Wire as emerging technologies editor. Earlier, he worked at Silicon Canals, a leading English language technology media source for the Benelux and wider Europe. He covered the European technology and startup ecosystem digging into latest funding rounds of startups.